When Yang Fang served as the edict of Shanghai Dao and arrived from Shanghai, the offensive and defensive battle of Suzhou had already begun. Li Hongzhang's camp, which is located in Taiping Town on the shore of Yangcheng Lake, was stunned for a long time when he heard the news, his face turned iron-blue, his hands couldn't help trembling slightly, and he gritted his teeth and scolded a local dialect of Hefei in a low voice.

"I'm sorry for your mother...... What a hell of a mess! ”

Li Hongzhang's younger brother Li Zhaoqing replaced the injured Li Hezhang by Li Hongzhang's side. He had never seen his second brother lose his temper like this, although he wanted to be comforted, but he didn't know how to speak.

This is really not something that can be persuaded in a sentence - it took a lot of effort, first knocking on the mountain and shaking the tiger, removing several cadres around Wu Xu, and then transferring the tiger away from the mountain, and transferring Wu Xu to the Huai army to help with military affairs, Zuihou naturally asked to go to Wu Xu's Shanghai Road, just waiting for the imperial court to approve the performance, asking for candidates, and the teacher Zeng Guofan could recommend Huang Fang.

Unexpectedly, when he saw that he was about to reap the credit, he killed a Yang Fang in the middle of the road, and easily picked the peaches. The saddest thing is that this appointment was issued in the form of approving his own twists and turns!

In a fit of anger, he couldn't help but want to move his capital to join Yang Fang, but after thinking for a moment, he still threw his pen in a dejected manner - although it is difficult to figure out the situation in this matter, but behind Yang Fang is Guan Zhuofan, which is certain. He didn't expect that it was one of his telegrams that leaked the secret, and Guan Zhuofan played a trick of "borrowing a boat to go to sea", but he just thought that judging from Guan Zhuofan's attitude of treating Shanghai as a forbidden place, secretly operating the position of Shanghai Road is not a matter of one or two days. And-

And the attitude of the imperial court. It's also worrying. Now the world is overlooking. Most of them are Han Chinese, and Shanghai, a land of wealth, is the imperial court deliberately putting it under the control of the banner people?

Li Hongzhang is not an idle person in the end, so after thinking about it, he quickly calmed down and carefully weighed the benefits and disadvantages. On the contrary, it was Li Zhaoqing, seeing that he was about to write and rest, and asked cautiously, "Second brother." Is it possible to send a letter to Master Zeng and fight again? ”

Li Hongzhang closed his eyes and didn't answer, as if he was thinking about something extremely difficult, and after a while, he finally opened his eyes and sighed.

"Guan Yixuan has become a climate, why bother my teacher." Li Hongzhang said bitterly, "Shanghai, don't fight. ”

Since we don't fight for Shanghai, we have to fight for other places. Li Hongzhang sent orders to Cheng Xueqi, Guo Songlin, and Liu Mingchuan on the front line. Intensify the attack, and be sure to get ahead of the Xuan army. Break Suzhou.

At that time, the situation of the Suzhou battlefield was that the Huai army was fighting from the north and the Xuan army was fighting from the south.

But if you want to break the city, it is not so easy, and even approaching the city is quite difficult, because at this time, it is Li Xiu who is in charge of the city guard.

Li Xiucheng led his troops to "King Qin" in October and fought two battles with Zeng Guoquan outside Jiangning City, and although he did not win, he managed to stabilize the once critical situation in "Tianjing." When the Xuanhuai and Huai armies sent troops from Shanghai, the "southern Jiangsu" province was in an emergency, especially the Xuan army, which was like a bamboo, and the Taihu Lake Naval Division of Kunshan, Changshu, Wujiang, Zhenze, and Tang Zhengcai was almost wiped out, which made Li Xiucheng anxious, and had to ask Hong Xiuquan to let him go back to Suzhou to defend his "hometown".

After much request, Hong Tianwang finally nodded, but put forward very peculiar conditions - the first was that he must return within thirty days, and there was no delay of one day; The second is that he is only allowed to go alone, and the more than 20,000 soldiers brought by King Qin must stay in Tianjing.

If these two items are alone, it will be enough, but there is a third clause that makes people laugh and cry - 200,000 taels of silver must be paid as a "security deposit", and if it cannot be returned by the expiration date, the silver will be confiscated.

Li Xiucheng had no choice but to try to raise money, not only sold out his mansion in Tianjing, but also asked people to send 60,000 taels from Suzhou, which was enough for Hong Xiuquan's 200,000 yuan, and took a team of personal soldiers and went straight to Suzhou. When he arrived in Suzhou, he immediately summoned Tan Shaoguang, Gao Yongkuan and other "Nine Tai Sui" to discuss the layout of the strategy, and resist one by one within a radius of twenty or thirty miles from Suzhou Prefecture.

The victory of the officers and troops was due to their strong firepower, while the victory of the Taiping army was due to their familiarity with the terrain and their flexible tactics, so for a while, the advance of the officers and troops became very difficult. It was not until Wall, together with Daniel Zhang, captured the main force of "King Ning" Zhou Wenjia in Dingjiaji, and broke it in a battle, that a big gap was opened on the southern front, and at the same time, Cheng Xueqi also won two victories over Gao Yongkuan in the north of Suzhou. And Li Xiucheng's Huang Zilong Department transferred from Wuxi was originally to coerce the Huai army's back road, but he was threatened by Wu Jianying's construction group in the direction of Changshu and did nothing. Only then did Li Xiucheng have to shrink the defensive line to the vicinity of Suzhou City, and the real offensive and defensive battle of Suzhou City finally began.

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The Taiping army defended the city, and there has always been a saying of "guarding the danger but not guarding the city", which means that the elite soldiers are not placed in the city to defend it, but rely on the dangerous terrain outside the city to build fortresses and fortresses to defend it.

Outside the city of Suzhou, there are no mountains and rivers worth mentioning, but there are rivers and rivers around. The Taiping army built a long wall by the river, and built hundreds of large stone fortresses and earthen camps in the wall, from Panmen in the south to Loumen in the north, and communicated with one air. The barracks in the city were dug into a large cellar as a place to store soldiers, covered with several layers of thick plates, and then piled up with layers of soil to resist the shelling of the officers and soldiers.

The defenders of the Taiping army in Suzhou concentrated more than 50,000 people, most of whom were subordinates of Tan Shaoguang, Gao Yongkuan and other "Nine Tai Sui". The officers and troops were almost encircled, and they also knew that they were at the critical moment of life and death, so they resisted extremely resolutely.

Guan Zhuofan's camp and the general grain platform of the Xuan army were located in Mudu Town, southwest of Suzhou City. On the Lingyan Mountain next to it, there was the palace "Guanwa Palace" that Wu Wangfu sent to build for Xi Shi, and there was the Gusu platform built on the Zishi Mountain, three years to gather timber, five years to become, the timber that came from a steady stream blocked the river port under the mountain, "the wood is stuffed in the desecration", the name of the wood desecration comes from this. This person is an outstanding town, and there are many talents, and the famous Fan Zhongyan is about the most outstanding one among them.

was originally a place for talented and beautiful women, but now he is commanding the army and fighting here, Guan Zhuofan can't help but sigh.

The Xuan army south of Suzhou was Daniel Zhang's horse team, Forrest's foreign gun regiment, Iksang's Kezi regiment, Jiang De's German character regiment, and the Kuizi battalion of the Jianzi regiment just transferred from Kunshan, totaling more than 13,000 people, as well as Zeng Bingzhong's green battalion and Lian Yong's 3,000 people. Liu Xunjiao's Zhongjun camp and Tulin's pro-military camp have not been counted in them because they want to defend the camp.

Another sharp weapon was the gunboat of the Xuan Army's naval division. Mudu is the waterway hub of Taihu Lake leading to Suzhou, although large ships such as Jintai and Baiyue cannot enter, but the other four steamers each carrying two guns can move unhindered on the river, not only can they fire artillery bombardment, but also can carry one or thirty soldiers, as a landing ship to use, raid everywhere, the most convenient. When Ding Ruchang brought these four gunboats to the camp to see Guan Zhuofan, he asked to personally lead the boats to participate in the battle, so that the sailors could also make a contribution.

"Boss!" Ding Ruchang smiled and asked An, "This time, the sailor didn't embarrass you." ”

Not only is there no shame, it is simply beautiful, and now southern Jiangsu can have such a situation, relying on this great victory of the water division. However, Guan Zhuofan refused to agree to Ding Ruchang's request, if nothing else, it was difficult to find. Although the gunboats were nimble on inland rivers, they were also vulnerable to gunfire from both sides, and it was not cost-effective to lose such an excellent general in case something happened to them.

"Give someone a little credit." Guan Zhuofan smiled, and first praised the merits of the water master before getting to the point, "You give me a good look at Tang Zhengcai, don't let him come out and make trouble again, it's a credit." ”

"Boss, it's a pity that you have to fight Suzhou," Ding Ruchang said with regret, "Otherwise, let Ixan join forces with me, and Li Chaobin will respond, and I will definitely be able to take down Tang Zhengcai's Xishan Island for you." ”

"What's there to fight? As long as Suzhou is broken, Tang Zhengcai will naturally fall...... Frog jumping tactics, do you know it? ”

"Frog jumping tactics?" Ding Ruchang looked at the boss in awe, "I don't know." ”

Mr. Guan smiled secretly in his heart: You don't know, MacArthur probably knows.

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(There is one more shift in the evening, after eating and drinking, continue to code words!) ）

*(To be continued......)